Listening Quiz #2 Flashcards
1
Q
Dates of the Renaissance period
A
1450-1600
2
Q
Dates of the early Baroque period
A
1600-1700
3
Q
What’s humanism?
A
Intellectual movement and ethical system focused on humans and their values, needs, interests, abilities, dignity, and freedom, often emphasizing secular culture and sensuality over sacred concerns
4
Q
Describe the innovation of moveable-type printing press
A
- Invention in 1450 during Renaissance
- Music printing soon followed -> expanding affordable access to vocal and instrumental music of all genres (sacred and secular)
5
Q
What’s the Protestant Reformation?
A
- AKA Lutheran Reformation
- Early 16th century (1500 and after)
- Martin Luther
- Separation of protestant Christian sects from the Roman Catholic Church
- Leads to great diversity in post-1500 Christian sacred music
6
Q
Guillaume Dufay
A
- 1400-1474
- Received early musical training in northern France (Flanders)
- Received thorough musical training from childhood at Cambrai Cathedral
- Spent more than 25 years in Italy, as a
musician and composer at the courts of various powerful families, or in major cathedrals, including the Papal Chapel in Rome - Composed music in all the sacred and secular genres common to his day (masses, motets, Magnificats, hymns, and chants, as well as secular songs of all types) using a rich musical language that combined techniques of earlier masters (Ars Nova) with new techniques, textures and textual sensitivity of the emerging Renaissance aesthetic
7
Q
What’s special about Guillaume Dufay’s “L’homme armé”?
A
- It’s a cantus-firmus composition (cantus-firmus Mass) that’s based on an extremely popular anonymous, monophonic secular tune known as L’homme armé
(The Armed Man) - Many original secular and sacred pieces composed during the Renaissance were based on this well-known tune
- Typical of the Renaissance Era, with its emphasis on humanism, that sacred music was occasionally treated less strictly and dogmatically than in the early Medieval Period -> but some were opposed to such mixtures of sacred and secular culture
8
Q
What’s word painting?
A
- Music is composed in a way that the sound of the music reflects the meaning of the text
- Ex: an allusion to heaven in the text might be set to a vocal line that is rising in pitch or the mention of “pain” or “tears” in the text might be set to harsh sounding, dark, or dissonant harmony
9
Q
What’s imitative polyphony?
A
- Stylistic development of the Renaissance
- AKA continuous imitation
- Brief fragments of melody (motives) are passed from voice to voice (or instrument to instrument) within the performing group, so that these motives are heard again and again within close proximity of each other, making the music easier to comprehend and follow
- In imitative polyphony the individual parts share brief snippets of melody so that you can occasionally hear the same musical figure occur in one voice after another (‘points of imitation’)
- Much easier to understand than non-imitative polyphony -> aural relationship between the independent parts
- After invention of imitative polyphony, most polyphony composed thereafter is imitative
10
Q
What are 2 of the primary goals of Renaissance composers that the use of imitative polyphony served?
A
- Makes the text clearer since the same words in each voice sometimes have the same fragment of melody
- Makes for music that is more readily understood and appreciated by audiences, because the melodies are reinforced through close repetition
11
Q
What are points of imitation?
A
In imitative polyphony, the individual parts share brief snippets of melody so that you can occasionally hear the same musical figure occur in one voice after another
12
Q
Josquin des Prez
A
- 1450-1521
- Received early musical training in northern France (Flanders)
- Became known as the greatest of the great and influential lineage of Flemish composers
- Moved to Italy, where he served in several royal courts, including those of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza of Milan, Duke Ercole d’Este of Ferrara, and the papal choir in Rome
- Composed both sacred and secular music, setting both canonic sacred texts and contemporary secular poetry by celebrated poets
- Achieved international fame, and multiple printed collections of his works circulated widely
- Known to Martin Luther -> referred to Josquin as “the greatest living composer”
13
Q
What’s a motet?
A
- Genre of sacred vocal music
- Polyphonic vocal genre, usually performed a cappella, that sets any Latin sacred text that doesn’t belong to the Mass or Divine Office
- Definition changes slightly during music history depending on time and place of composition
14
Q
Vicente Lusitano
A
- 1520 - after 1561
- Portuguese composer, music theorist, and Roman Catholic priest (later converted to Protestantism) of African descent
- Sparse biography provides a rare glimpse of African presence in Renaissance Europe’s musical life
- Evidence of Lusitano’s racialized identity -> in 17th-century biographical manuscript in which he’s referred to as ‘homem pardo’
- Characteristics of Lusitano’s professional position within the Catholic Church -> the fact that he never held a benefice (i.e., a paid, permanent position) nor served as a maestro di capella, align with the limitations placed on priests of African descent
- Lack of info about Lusitano is directly related to his failure to find a secure position at church or court (fate of many musicians at the time)
- The institutional racism of both his own time and of later historiographical approaches (except for a few Portuguese scholars) erased him from all histories of Renaissance music until recently
15
Q
Maddalena Casulana
A
- 1544-1583
- Italian composer, lutenist and singer
- Primarily known today for her published madrigal
- Very little is known about her life
- Believed to have studied music in Florence, to have traveled widely, and to have been well known at Italian courts
- Known to have been commissioned to write a large-scale 5-part piece for a royal wedding in Munich, where she traveled at the duke’s expense
- Her 3 books of madrigals, containing a total of 66 works, are the first by a woman to be printed
- Her Primo libro de madrigali a quattro voci (Venice, 1568) was dedicated to Isabela de’Medici Orsini (noted patron and musical amateur) -> this spirited manifesto shows Casulana to be a woman of self-assurance
16
Q
What’s a madrigal?
A
- Most important secular vocal genre of the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods
- Polyphonic, secular vocal genre invented in Italy in the 16th century (late Renaissance)
- Settings of secular poetry on a variety of topics (love, Greek mythology, etc.) in the vernacular language (always in Italian for Monteverdi and M. Casulana)
- Nearly always settings of celebrated contemporary poetry by someone other
than the composer - Genre of ‘high art’ -> created and performed for the entertainment of royalty and other educated members of royal courts
- Commoners rarely/never heard this music
- Imitated and adapted by international composers in royal courts in France and England, where they created madrigals using poetry in their own languages
17
Q
Claudio Monteverdi
A
- 1567-1643
- Perhaps most important musician in late 16th- and early 17th-century Italy
- Excelled in nearly all the major genres of the period
- His 9 books of madrigals consolidated the achievement of the late Renaissance masters and cultivated new aesthetic and stylistic paradigms for the musical Baroque
- In his operas for Mantua and Venice he took the experiments of the Florentines (who originally invented opera circa 1600) and developed powerful ways of expressing and structuring musical drama
- Composer of high Renaissance and early Baroque music -> Transitional composer who ‘bridged’ between these 2 musical style periods, composing in and embodying the styles and genres of both style periods, composing a great deal of sacred and secular music for voices and instruments in all combinations
- Composed operas that were performed in the local opera houses of Venice -> most of these works survive, and they have earned Monteverdi the title of ‘first great composer of opera’ -> still performed today.
- Traveled regularly to the wealthy Italian court of Ferrara, where he wrote music for a famous group of professional female singers known as the Concerto delle donne
- Published 8 books of madrigals (1587-1643) -> 9th was published after his death
18
Q
Michael Praetorius
A
- 1571-1621
- Composed La Bourée from Terpsichore (1612) & Courante from Terpsichore (1612)
19
Q
What’s a bourée?
A
- Specific genre of Renaissance dance
- AKA borrèia
- A dance of French origin (somewhat resembles the gavotte)
- Quick, in duple time, and melodic phrase starts with a quarter-note anacrusis or “pick-up” -> the 1st note of the melody occurs before the “downbeat” (before the first beat of the meter)
20
Q
What’s a courante?
A
- Specific genre of Renaissance dance
- Quicker dance in which the beat is subdivided into groups of 3 rather than 2
- ‘Courante’ means “running” -> in the late Renaissance the courante was danced with fast running and jumping steps
21
Q
Francesca Caccini
A
- 1587-after 1641
- Composer, singer, multi-instrumentalist (keyboards and stringed instruments), music teacher and musica (all-around musician) serving at the Medici court in Tuscany
- Entered service to the Medici’s in 1607 and served in the women’s court for more than 30 years
- Oldest legitimate child of Giulio Caccini
- Contemporary of Galileo and Monteverdi, both of whom she knew
- Composed at least 17 theatrical works, nearly all of which were performed at court, along with hundreds of shorter vocal works meant for chamber performance
- Little of her music survives
22
Q
What’s a musica/musico?
A
An all-around musician
23
Q
What’s a monody?
A
- New vocal style and texture in 1600
- Writings of Francesca Caccini’s father (& other music theorists in 1600) demonstrated a new style of vocal writing -> monody
- Arias and recitatives fall under the general vocal category of monody -> includes all works that can be correctly referred to as a “song” of one kind or another
- Involves a single vocal melody (solo voice) above an instrumental accompaniment
- Homophonic texture
